Quote

Mystery is what happens to us when we allow life to evolve rather than having to make it happen all the time. It is the strange knock at the door, the sudden sight of an unceremoniously blooming flower, an afternoon in the yard, a day of riding the midtown bus. Just to see. Just to notice. Just to be there.

Joan D. Chittister

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Joan D. Chittister
Rather
Door
Bus
Happens
Sight
Yards
Make
Flower
Riding
Time
Mystery
Afternoon
Life
Doors
Sudden
Midtown
Strange
Evolve
Blooming
Happen
Notice
Yard
Wonder
Allow
Knock

More quotes by Joan D. Chittister

Image
Superficial people are those who simply go along without a question in the world-asking nothing, troubled by nothing, examining nothing. Whatever people around them do, they do, too. That's a sad and plastic life-routine and comfortable, maybe, but still sad.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
Living well has something to do with the spirituality of wholeheartedness, of seeing life more as a grace than as a penance, as time to be lived with eager expectation of its goodness, not in dread of its challenges.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
Ideals are like stars, Carl Schurz wrote. You will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like seafarers on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny. Ideals do not determine what we do to make a living in life They govern what we become as we do it.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
Find the thing that stirs your heart and make room for it
Joan D. Chittister
Image
Beware the religion that turns you against another one. It's unlikely that it's really religion at all.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is
Joan D. Chittister
Image
In scripture God brings the animals to the human for naming. In that simple act the human is brought to recognize the particular personality and worth of each living creature. Too bad we forget so often.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
I celebrate myself, the poet Walt Whitman wrote. The thought is so delicious it is almost obscene. Imagine the joy that would come with celebrating the self — our achievements, our experiences, our existence. Imagine what it would be like to look into the mirror and say, as God taught us, That's good.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
Solitude is not a way of running away from life ... from our feelings. On the contrary. This is the time we sort them out, air them, get over them, and go on without the burden of yesterday.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
Benedictine spirituality is a consistent one: live life normally, live life thouhtfully, live life profouncly, live life well. Never neglect and never exaggerate. It is a lesson that a world full of cults and fads and workaholics and short courses in difficult subjects needs dearly to learn.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
But we are here to depart from this world as finished as we can possibly become.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
The spiritual response is too often a simplistic one: we abandon God or we blame God for abandoning us.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
Imagine how happy, how holy, life would be if we ever really learn to see beauty.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
June is the time for being in the world in new ways, for throwing off the cold and dark spots of life.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
We each should have 2 pockets: in 1 the message, 'I am dust & ashes' in the other, 'For me the universe was made.'
Joan D. Chittister
Image
Life always comes out of death. The present rises from the ashes of the past. The future is always possible for those who are willing to re-create it.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
To be a presence of perpetual thanksgiving may be the ultimate goal of life. The thankful person is the one for whom life is simply one long exercise in the sacred.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
Compassion for the other comes out of our ability to accept ourselves. Until we realize both our own weaknesses and our own privileges, we can never tolerate lack of status and depth of weakness in the other.
Joan D. Chittister
Image
A life of value is not a series of great things well done it is a series of small things consciously done.
Joan D. Chittister